Every time we go to the storage unit, the only objective is to grab what I can immediately drop off at donation. In the liquidation, the downsizing, and the admittance of usefulness comes a sadness; acknowledging this sadness comes despair. We can organize and utilize what we really want to keep later. Right now these items have spent a minimum of 3 years in this holding space; and in this holding space are also some of the oldest childhood memories and memorabilia.
What is the deciding factor for keeping it? How intense must the attachment be for us to never let it go? And if the memory or emotion is so intense, why is a thing even necessary? It’s what it represents, it’s the association provided most often…
I say this time I will scan all the pictures and eliminate the huge tupperware of photos and photo albums. I don’t want the weight to carry or sacrifice the space it takes up in my closet; especially when I can compartmentalize and downsize by digitizing them.
Truly though, most burdensome are the things we hold onto in anticipation of who we believe ourselves to be, not only our ideal selves but characters in the stories we have told about ourselves by our stuff. We all carry the one day in some little way. Women know this in the form of a dress for an occasion we never actually attend. E.g. the purchasing of ballet shoes and never going to class, the accumulation of arts and crafts products for all the things we want to build or create, the building up of a library while simultaneously losing time to get through all the books, or the houses purchased with large backyards for growing and cultivating, yet it grows weeds and you dread mowing it.
My papers, my poems, my writing: I wonder what it ask of me.
The ambitions which never become solid goals are the real things we hold onto which hold us back the most. We build an ideal up in our mind and we often fail to live up to this person.
At some point it has to be decided: Do it-Be it-Make it…or just, Let it go. This can be a greatest weight off our shoulders. And here we should not despair but feel jubilance. This freedom is the freedom from our own ego.
childhood blanket